Topless “Speed Bandits” - most viral film on the net

Sex sells. This was proven once again by the Danish Road Safety Council, when they launched their first ever viral campaign last November to reduce speeding in the country.

by Sasha Puhova

The campaign was recently claimed by the trendy online magazine “Contagious” to be the most viral film on the net, having been seen 6.5 million times across the world.

The key objective of the video producers was to target the male audience that is otherwise hard-to-reach by traditional campaigns. Nobody even hoped to achieve such results. Alone in the first week, the campaign was seen 1 million times across 180 countries, being viewed 55 times even in Vatican.

The video is made as an American news report, where the focus is set on the “liberal” Denmark for taking the creative initiative in combating speed violations in Copenhagen. Topless models are waiving around with speed limit signs, hoping to attract the attention of the passing-by-drivers to the speed limitations.

The campaign is undoubtedly funny, appealing especially to the male part of the world population. The humoristic, realistic (for some!) and even shocking (for others) factors add to the viral campaign value.

The short film has not only attracted the global attention to the traffic issues, but also to Denmark itself. On YouTube a viewer says: “This is awesome. I need to go study abroad in Denmark!” while the Danish Road Safety Council admitted to having been overwhelmed by interest from journalists in Brazil, Spain, Germany, Italy and England, who made real news coverage of the topless combaters of speed.

The video was uploaded on YouTube on the 18th of November, but have not received that many play-throughs, viewed only around 40,000 times up to date and favoured a few 87 times. So it seems that it is not YouTube to blame for the popularity but direct linking.

The key question though is whether or not the campaign served the purpose of reducing speed violations. A research made for the Danish Road Safety Council in December had shown that out of the targeted drivers, 30% thought more of their speed as a result of the film.

Judge for yourself the efficiency of such a road safety campaign below.